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If you go down to the seedy underbelly today, you’re in for a big surprise… Union Players, we know you’re still digesting the lovely Blackheart shaped treat we gave you yesterday, but we have another treat for you today! Today's post will take a look at the Season 3 transformation of none other than Harry the Hat, and then we'll take a closer look at what really happened to the Selective Trait. We there’s been a lot of speculation since we showed you Minx's card, so it's time to introduce the new Guild Reference Cards!
Harry’s had a lot of changes going into Season 3, so bear with us while we talk through them all.
First off, he’s an absolute beast now. Look at him. He’s one of our coolest models, but his rules didn’t QUITE live up to how awesome his model is. Well no more! Look at him. Look at that Playbook, it’s a thing of righteous beauty. In combination with his new 2” melee range, he can now really Push enemy models around and knock them down, and generate momentum for doing so! He can even stick damage on the enemy once they’re knocked down and he can start hitting that momentous 2 DMG and double Push on the fourth column.
You’ll notice that, in addition to being drastically improved, it’s also been shortened, in accordance with our general look at models with longer Playbooks.
He has also gained an additional point of INF, taking him to [2/4], meaning he gets to contribute to the game more, even when he himself can’t get to swinging his wrench in melee or set the enemy on fire. Speaking of, eagle eyed readers will already know this from Stoker, but Molotov is now an ongoing-effect AOE, making it easier to spread fire across the Pitch. Burn, baby burn!
The back of his card has seen fewer changes than the front, Rising Anger and Crazy are still there, but we wanted to represent his extremely cunning hat a little better.
Previously, having to spend [1] MP to gain a small TAC buff for friendly models near to Harry was good, but situational. A small aura, coupled with the fact that he had to trigger it, meant it just wasn’t as cool or as useful as it could have been. In addition, when we were looking at Union options going into Season 3, we knew they skewed quite heavily towards damage over actually playing the beautiful game.
While that’s not a problem, we definitely knew we wanted to improve the Union’s footballing capability. As you saw with Blackheart yesterday (and if you didn’t, you should!) pushing more options for Union Players outside of the classic ‘smash face’ plan was a big goal for us going into Season 3. Harry’s new Inspiring Hat is a perfect example of this, passively allowing other friendly models within the aura to make cheaper Teamwork actions.
This lets the Union generate momentum from successful Passes, bank that momentum, AND use Teamwork actions to move all over the Pitch, making them both more mobile and more momentum efficient.
Now obviously, this only works when models are within a small area close to Harry, AND he himself can’t make cheaper actions, so careful positioning will be required to get the most out of this ability.
Of course, it’s not just the Union that can make use of Harry, the Alchemists, Brewers, Butchers, and Engineers can too…
And there’s still no Selective trait on his card. So how, we hear you cry, eyes raised to the heavens, do we know which Guilds can use which Union models? Well, I’ll tell you for how:
These Guild Reference Cards are a new addition for Season 3, and currently they list, very simply, what models will work for each Guild. The seed (ha!) of these cards was planted when we started designing the Farmers. As many of you will have seen from Tater’s rules, the harvest-marker mechanic isn’t something we could put on an individual model’s card, it needed to be a Guild wide special rule. As a result, we decided the Farmers Starter Set would come with a reference card with the rules for harvest-markers on it. This means that, just like every other rule in Guild Ball barring the Core Rules, you can have the card sitting next to the table, and refer to it mid game.
Moving forward, we realised that as future Union models, and Guilds are released, we would need to be constantly reprinting and errata’ing cards to fix the Selective rule. Which seems like, frankly, both a lot of work of us, AND a bit of a pain for you guys to keep track of.
So we combined the two ideas into these Guild Reference Cards. These cards will come in the brand new Season 3 card packs, one for each Guild (except the Union, obv!), and each will list which Union models will play for that Guild this season. This provides a handy one stop reference, removing the need to constantly go back and check each individual Union model card to check if they’ll play for your Guild, now you just need to check a single card.
These cards will also cover, like with the Farmer’s, any Guild specific rules going forward, which provides ease of reference and time saving for you guys!
The cards will also, of course, like all Guild Ball rules, be freely available online with each Guild’s card download.
Let us know what you think of Harry, and the Guild Reference cards on our social media, or, of course, right here! TheLieutenant will be floating around the comments to answer any questions you may have for the next hour or so.
‘til next time, may your coffers be full, and your machinations many and varied! Happy Unioning!